Summer IV - V. The Sabbath + the “help” + Françoise

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Summer III. Izaak Walton

It is Sunday morning, and above earth’s beauty shines the purest, softest sky this summer has yet gladdened us withal. My window is thrown open; I see the sunny gleam upon garden leaves and flowers; I hear the birds whose wont it is to sing to me; ever and anon the martins that have their home beneath my eaves sweep past in silence. Church bells have begun to chime; I know the music of their voices, near and far.

There was a time when it delighted me to flash my satire on the English Sunday; I could see nothing but antiquated foolishness and modern hypocrisy in this weekly pause from labour and from bustle. Now I prize it as an inestimable boon, and dread every encroachment upon its restful stillness. Scoff as I might at “Sabbatarianism,” was I not always glad when Sunday came? ... This day of the seven I granted to my better genius; work was put aside, and, when Heaven permitted, trouble forgotten.

... Think as one may of its significance, our Day of Rest has a peculiar sanctity, felt, I imagine, in a more or less vague way, even by those who wish to see the village lads at cricket and theatres open in the town. The idea is surely as good a one as ever came to heavy-laden mortals; let one whole day in every week be removed from the common life of the world, lifted above common pleasures as above common cares... If its ancient use perish from among us, so much the worse for our country... With the decline of old faith, Sunday cannot but lose its sanction, and no loss among the enumerable that we are suffering will work so effectually for the popular vulgarization. What hope is there of guarding the moral beauty of the day when the authority which set it apart is no longer recognized? -- Imagine a bank-holiday once a week!

Alpha.  

In theory I like the idea of a day of the week set aside for reflection -- but why just a day? Also it would be unseemly for one, for whom “old faith” has declined to nothing, to support the trappings of that ancient institution.

V. Sabbath cont.

On Sunday I come down later than usual; I make a change of dress, for it is fitting that the day of spiritual rest should lay aside the livery of the laborious week. For me, indeed, there is no labour at any time, but nevertheless does Sunday bring me repose. I share in the common tranquility; my thought escapes the workaday world more completely than on other days.

It is not easy to see how this house of mine can make to itself a Sunday quiet, for at all times it is well-nigh soundless; yet I find a difference. My housekeeper comes into the room with her Sunday smile; she is happier for the day and the sight of her happiness gives me pleasure. She speaks, if possible, in a softer voice; she wears a garment which reminds me that there is only the lightest and cleanest housework to be done. She will go to church, morning and evening, and I know that she is better for it. During her absence I sometimes look into rooms which on other days I never enter; it is merely to gladden my eyes with the shining cleanliness, the perfect order, I am sure to find in the good woman’s domain. But for that spotless and sweet-smelling kitchen, what would it avail me to range my books and hang my pictures? All the tranquility of my life depends upon the honest care of this woman who lives and works unseen. And I am sure that the money I pay her is the least part of her reward. She is such an old-fashioned person that the mere discharge of what she deems a duty is in itself an end to her, and the work of her hands in itself a satisfaction, a pride.

When a child, I was permitted to handle on Sunday certain books which could not be exposed to the more careless usage of common days; volumes finely illustrated, or the more handsome editions of familiar authors, or works which, merely by their bulk, demanded special care. Happily, these books were all of the higher rank in literature, and so there came to be established in my mind an association between the day of rest and names which are the greatest in verse and prose...

Alpha.

Never have I longed to be a parent, to force my spawn upon the world. But the thought of introducing to someone, of encouraging the love of, my favorite cultural artifacts -- books, music, movies, TV shows -- is surely tempting. That, and the desire to see what your beloved might have been like as a child -- assuming, for me, a daughter and that she didn't, in character, skip a generation, as children are wont to do -- are the only reasons I can think of for wanting to have a child. But what are the odds that any of this would come to fruition?

As I said early, back in Spring II., this housekeeper is truly a utopian dream. I can’t imagine sharing a house with even so exemplary an employee. For one thing it would interfere with my idea of privacy, and I would be unable to relate to her as anything but an equal. I would arrange my life to make her’s easier. The “natural” relationship between the master and servant (wonderfully expressed in the short story The Second Time Around by M.F.K. Fisher) is completely foreign to me. This is not a boast; Ryecroft’s Mrs. M. would seem to have, from her point of view, a great gig. The housekeepers I periodically let in for a quick go at cleaning what I mostly fail to see, would probably envy her workload and steady income.

But I have to observe here, as we talk about the admittedly attractive aspects of the Sabbath, that for the housekeeper this is a day of less work rather than a day of rest. She is like the non-Jewish servants Jews like to employ so they have someone who can push buttons and nasty things like that on days their Sky Fairy says such actions are verboten. This reminds me of the elderly woman who would complain about my (a taxi driver) working on the Sabbath as I drove her to church. It’s assumed that some people will ignore the Sabbath to perform work that can’t be set aside. But where do you draw the line?

Also, the idea that “special” writers (Shakespeare, Milton, Homer) are best appreciated on “special” days reminds me of the tatami room in Japanese homes -- a special space from which to appreciate life. I actually prefer this spatial distinction to the temporal distinction, as you can take advantage of it at any time and it doesn't force the rest of the world to do something it can only imperfectly do. Of course I don’t have the physical space for such a room, but I still like the idea.

I can’t help thinking what authors and books I would set aside for special times. This book would certainly be on the list. The Decline and Fall and Wendell Berry’s essays. You don’t want anything both engrossing and long since you won’t be reading a whole book. Plutarch’s Lives would be good. Court of Memory by James McConkey and A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman or The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man by Albert Jay Nock would all work for me.

Beta.

If memory serves, this is the most we are going to get about Mrs. M., and I’ve already written something about servants and masters, so this is probably the place to say something about Françoise. I really had not expected to be referring to Proust and In Search of Lost Time here, but so I am. Proust is generally remembered as being obsessed with the aristocracy -- the Guermantes in his books. And this is certainly true enough, but, having read his endless book three times now, I have to say that the best parts, the most vivid and memorable characters, may be within “Marcel’s” own family: his bed-ridden aunt Léonie, his beloved grandmother and her two, too subtle sisters, his womanizing uncle Adolphe, and his father. But in some ways the best of all his characters is the servant Françoise. She is there from the beginning, when she still works for his aunt, through his infatuation with Gilbert, his trip to Balbec with his grandmother, and his affair with Albertine. I would love to see In Search of Lost Time rewritten from her point of view.

She is nothing like our Mrs. M. She is loyal and hardworking, to be sure, but she is not quiet, she has her flaws, and she most definitely has her own agenda. She is believable. If In Search of Lost Time were turned into a TV mini-series hers would be the best part for a character actress. The equivalent -- but greatly magnified -- of the Austen roles Sophie Thompson has played: Miss Bates and Mary Musgrove (née Eliott).

Next: Summer VI. Peace and war.

Summer I. Time regained

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Spring XXV. The end of spring

To-day, as I was reading in the garden, a waft of summer perfume -- some hidden link of association in what I read -- I know not what it may have been -- took me back to school-boy holidays: I recovered with strange intensity that lightsome mood of long release from tasks, of going away to the seaside, which is one of childhood’s blessings. I was in the train; no rushing express, such as bears you great distances; the sober train which goes to no place of importance, which lets you see the white steam of the engine float and fall upon a meadow ere you pass. Thanks to a good and wise father, we youngsters saw nothing of seaside places where crowds assemble; I am speaking; too, of a time more than forty years ago, when it was still possible to find on the coasts of northern England, east or west, spots known only to those who loved the shore for its beauty and its solitude. At every station the train stopped; little stations, decked with beds of flowers, smelling warm in the sunshine where country-folk got in with baskets, and talked in an unfamiliar dialect, an English which to us sounded almost like a foreign tongue. Then the first glimpse of the sea; the excitement of noting whether the tide was high or low -- stretches of sand and weedy pools, or halcyon wavelets frothing at their furthest reach, under the sea-banks starred with convolvulus. Of a sudden, our station!

Ah, that taste of the brine on a child’s lips! Nowadays, I can take holiday when I will, and go whithersoever it please me; but that salt kiss of the sea air I shall never know again. My senses are dulled; I cannot get so near to nature; I have a sorry dread of her clouds, her wind, and must walk with tedious circumspection where once I ran and leapt exultingly... I can but look at what I once enjoyed.

Alpha.

Swann’s Way, the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time was published (at the author’s expense) in 1913. Both Gissing, in Ryecroft, and Proust played repeatedly with this idea of the past being brought to mind by one thing or another. Proust was more determined in hunting down and articulating the triggers and process of this phenomenon. The mechanism is perhaps not so important as the result -- but I think Proust is right in emphasizing taste and smell as having the most profound affect on reviving our memories.

Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once, A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

-Diane Ackerman A Natural History of the Senses

I spent my earliest childhood years in the hot and humid heart of America, in a region defined by great rivers. Ever since, I have lived in the arid to Mediterranean West. On the rare occasions when some meteorological anomaly gives us a hot and humid day -- with perhaps a rain shower falling on steaming asphalt -- I am transported back in time to my childhood in a most powerful way. Not only do I remember the street and the houses, but also a hint of the feeling of being the child I was then, when this block of an old, but ordinary, suburban street was my whole world. I wonder then what’s become of the girl who was my best friend then -- who, I’m sad to say, I never think of otherwise.

In all of these instances, I think we recall ourselves, not a child we once were. It is Proust burying his face in his aunt’s quilt, Gissing (I’m guessing) recalling the sea air, and me wondering about my friend and hoping the gas station on the corner still has an Orange Crush in the old coffin-style soft drink dispensing machine.

Beta.

I finally gave up on my old cell phone today and bought its replacement. With these phones you usually have the option of saving your address book to the SIM card. I imagined that you could then transfer your information to a new phone along with the SIM card -- and perhaps, if the new phone is identical with the old, that does work. But it didn’t in my case. So all my information needs to be re-entered. And the phone’s interface seems to have been designed to punish you for buying an amazingly cheap device. Fair enough, I suppose -- though I hardly use the thing so I feel no urge to spend more than $17.

As always with these modern marvels, the manual describes a plethora of features I will never use. You’d think they might punish you for being thrifty by only giving you a few, easy to use features. But apparently not. Still, the tiny thing is an awkward calculator, a dubious alarm clock and timer, a tedious calendar, and a memo pad of doubtful value, in addition to its voice and text communication capabilities. I can remember when I would have paid much more for a device that could have done any of these things just as badly. And, as a person who remembers telephone party-lines, the basic voice and text capabilities still amaze me.

I just hope this phone doesn’t end up going through the washer like the last one did -- but that was many years ago.

Postscript: Alas, alas! I thought the little wonder had survived it's bath unharmed but the "1" key rarely works now. Perhaps it will recover with time and use? But probably not.

Next: Summer II. Traveling.

Spring IX. Independence, forsooth! + annotated books

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: VIII. Nature and society

For more that six years I trod the pavements, never stepping once upon mother earth -- for the parks are but pavements disguised with a growth of grass. Then the worst was over. Say I the worst? No, no; things far worse were to come; the struggle against starvation has its cheery side when one is young and vigorous.  But at all events I had begun to earn a living; I held assurance of food and clothing for half a year at a time; granted health, I might hope to draw my not insufficient wages for many a twelvemonth. And they were the wages of work done independently, when and where I would. I thought with horror of lives spent in an office, with an employer to obey. The glory of the career of letters was its freedom, its dignity!

The fact of the matter was, of course, that I served, not one master, but a whole crowd of them. Independence, forsooth! If my writing failed to please editor, publisher, public, where was my daily bread? ... I marvel at the recollection that for a good score of years this pen and a scrap of paper clothed and fed me and my household, kept me in physical comfort, held at bay all those hostile forces of the world ranged against one who has no resource save in his own right hand.

But I was thinking of the year which saw my first exodus from London. On an irresistible impulse, I suddenly made up my mind to go into Devon, a part of England I had never seen. At the end of March I escaped from my grim lodgings, and, before I had time to reflect on the details of my undertaking, I found myself sitting in sunshine at a spot very near to where I now dwell -- before me the  green valley of the broadening Exe and the pine-clad ridge of Haldon. That was one of the moments of my life when I have tasted exquisite joy... The light, the air, had for me something of the supernatural -- affecting me, indeed, only less than at a later time did the atmosphere of Italy...

I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that which I now became there was a very notable difference. In a single day I had matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I suddenly entered into conscious enjoyment of powers and sensibilities which had been developing unknown to me...

... so intense was my delight in the beautiful world about me that I forgot even myself; I enjoyed without retrospect or forecast; I, the egoist in grain, forgot to scrutinize my own emotions, or to trouble my happiness by comparison with others’ happier fortune. It was a healthful time; it gave me a new lease of life, and taught me -- in so far as I was teachable -- how to make use of it.

Alpha.

I experienced a 20th century equivalent of his life of the “independent” man of letters. For about a decade I made my living as a freelance computer programer. I too was proud not to be a mere employee, only to end up a contractor dependent on a variety of bosses who were pleased to leave me to my own devices whenever there was no work to be done. It all worked out well enough, but the only security was in the knowledge that I was always on my own. Others might be blindsided by a layoff but for me the future was always contingent.

Perhaps this is a bit like the difference between being a theist and an atheist. The theist believes there is a Guiding Hand conducting his life while the atheist realizes he’s on his own. An analogy could be that the atheist is like a free climber on the side of a cliff, carefully negotiating the hand and foot holds, while the theist boldly climbs the rock face secure in his reliance on his safety line -- which is not actually secured to anything.

Beta.

Since my last rereading of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, I’ve been wanting an illustrated and hyper-annotated versions of all the books I read which are set in an earlier time. Rereading Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End added another aspect to this desired annotation, as I also want to know not just what a word like “Tory” means, but what it means to the author. A quick trip to Wikipedia tells you too little or too much in such a case, as the meaning of the term changed from generation to generation and, at times, almost from year to year.

Ideally, I want texts that make clear what the author meant by his use of every word, since the meaning of words changes so quickly. And this doesn’t even touch on the additional issue of a character using a word or term incorrectly. Here’s an example, in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, one of Muriel Barbery’s characters uses the word “Epicurean.” The common usage of that term means the opposite of the word’s original, philosophical, meaning. Epicurus wanted a diet that would be so simple to obtain that there would be little chance of your ever craving something you couldn’t easily supply. The world, however, thinks of an Epicurean as a gourmand, with highly refined tastes.

Given Barbery’s background in philosophy, I’m sure she knows the correct usage. There’s every reason to think her character also should know this, but could Barbery be using it in the more conventional way to be less confusing to her readership? I’m not positive.

There are many other cases where the correct meaning of a term is less certain and where the author or character could well be under the impression that the term means something other than your understanding. If only we could see an image of all the artifacts referenced, hear the music mentioned, and get a quick definition of all the terms used. Is that asking too much?

This is a bit random (joke) but I’m including this Vsauce video here because it discusses the change over time in the use of the word “random”, and also because it talks about Quantum entanglement, something I will refer to later.

Next: Spring X. Salad days